July 9, 1999

Big Racial Disparity Persists in Internet Use

By DAVID E. SANGER

ASHINGTON -- A new Federal survey shows that while minority groups are increasingly gaining access to computers and the Internet, the racial divide remains stark, with blacks and Hispanics less than half as likely as whites to explore the net from home, work or school.

The study, the third and most comprehensive to be conducted by the Commerce Department over the past three years, reinforces the fear that minority groups are increasingly at a disadvantage in competing for the hottest entry-level jobs in the country: those that require a knowledge of computers and comfort in navigating the Internet.

Related Articles Common Ground Elusive as Technology Have-Nots Meet Haves (July 8, 1999) Filling a Skill Shortage, Close to Home (July 4, 1999) Studies Reach Contradictory Conclusions About the Internet Population (May 10, 1998 )

But the study also contained some new findings that add considerable complexity to the ongoing debate about how race, income level and location affect access to the technology explosion of the 1990's. These are among the findings:

¶Among families earning $15,000 to $35,000 per year, more than 32 percent of whites owned computers, but only 19 percent of blacks and Hispanics at comparable income levels had computers at home. That gap widened from eight percentage points five years ago, even as the price of entry-level personal computers plunged.

¶Children in single-parent households have far less access to computers and the Internet than those in two-parent households. A child in a two-parent white household is nearly twice as likely to have Internet access as a child in a one-parent white household; the disparity is even greater between single-parent and two-parent black households.

¶The highest penetration of computers in households in the United States can be found in largely rural, cold-weather states, many of which have pockets of high-technology jobs. The lowest penetration is in southern states where poverty and education troubles still reign; outside the South and Appalachia, New York was at the bottom.

Larry Irving, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for communications and information, who oversaw the study, said, "It is positive that we doubled the number of computers and Internet access for African-Americans and Hispanics over the past four years, and it's great that we have seen an increase of 50 percent in one year for use of the Net" by minorities. But he said "it is abysmal that we still have a gap of 3 to 1 among the races" in Internet access at home, "and that's what we have to work on."

President Clinton drew on the highlights of the report today during the last leg of his tour of impoverished corners of the United States, and announced several private-sector initiatives to make computers more available to the poor, particularly in inner cities. But the White House did not link today's study to any new Government initiatives, arguing instead that the disparities would be even greater if Clinton had not pressed for more computers in schools, libraries and community centers.

Among those initiatives has been an "E-rate" that reduces the cost of internet access for schools and libraries in low-income areas, a program Republicans have sought to limit because it is underwritten by fees on telephone bills.

But mostly the administration has relied on private sector grants, chiefly from computer and Internet companies.

"The message is that we need a lot of heavy lifting in the private sector," Irving said today.

The study issued today echoes the findings of several university and corporate surveys of computer use. But several of those have found an even wider racial divide.

"The big question is why African-Americans are not adopting this technology," said Donna L. Hoffman, a professor of management at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. "It is not just price, because they are buying cable and satellite system in large numbers. So we have to look deeper to cultural and social factors. I think there is still a question of 'What's in it for me?' "

Some of the statistics in today's study suggests that minorities are beginning to answer that question. In 1994, only 10 percent of black households reported that they owned a computer, versus 27 percent of white households. Last year, the Census Bureau found after door-to-door visits to a sampling of 48,000 households, the figure rose to 23 percent for blacks and nearly 47 percent for whites.

The divide is even greater when the census bureau looked at use of the internet from home. Last year, about 27 percent of white households had Internet access, compared with about 9 percent of black and Hispanic households.

Black and Hispanic computer users, unlike whites, are more likely to have Internet access outside the home than at home.

Not surprisingly, most of the divisions in computer use correlate to income levels and education. Sixty-one percent of whites and 54 percent of blacks in households earning more than $75,000 used the internet regularly, but the figures drop to 17 percent of whites and 8 percent of blacks when families are earning $15,000 to $35,000.

Similarly families in which the parents attended college were three times more likely to access the internet from home than families where the parents stopped their educaiton after earning a high school diploma or its equivalent.

One of the curious issues is why single-parent families use computers and the Internet so much less than two-parent families. "It's an issue of money and interest," said Prof. Hoffman.

Some of the most interesting figures in the study reveal a huge difference in computer use depending on where in the country one lives. Roughly one in four households in Mississippi, West Virginia and Arkansas reported that they have home computers. But more than half in Califoria own at least one, and the figure approaches two-thirds in places like Utah and Alaska. About 40 percent of Texas households own one, about the same figure as in Massachusetts. Both are considered high-tech centers: Dell and Compaq, two of the biggest PC makers, are both Texas-based corporations, while much of the computer age began in the Boston suburbs.

The report, issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is available through its Web site, www.ntia.doc.gov. Printed copies may be ordered by calling (202) 482-7002.

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• Department of Commerce

• Falling Through the Net II: Defining the Digital Divide

• National Telecommunications and Information Administration